The Pope has urged Catholics to use Twitter as a "portal of truth" and a way of converting non-believers to Catholicism.
In a letter published today, "Social Networks: portals of truth and faith; new spaces for evangelization" the Pope, a new Twitter convert, warmly endorses the Web 2.0.
"Unless the Good News is made known also …

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They'd be better off...

trying to convert believers to Catholicism rather than non-believers. I mean, it's easier to get someone to switch from Gold Blend to Douwe Egberts that to recruit someone that never drinks coffee, right?

Re: They'd be better off...

Re: They'd be better off...

That depends on the type of non-believer you're talking about. Are they non-believers because they only think the existence of a supernatural God is simple unknowable, or is it because they fully understand the extremely low and ever shrinking probability of having a supernatural force governing our lives?

It's the defining difference between Agnostic Atheists and Atheists. An Agnostic Atheist could be conceivably flipped to an Agnostic Theist with a simple change of perspective, where an outright Atheist will generally not be converted without proof of the supernatural claim using scientific method.

Re: They'd be better off...

I mean, it's easier to get someone to switch from Gold Blend to Douwe Egberts that to recruit someone that never drinks coffee, right?

The narrower the religious dogma schism disagreements - the more the hatred of each other.

Religions will always have a recruiting chance in the population that was NOT indoctrinated in childhood. When real life gets tough - there is a human trait of wanting to believe anyone who says they have all the answers. If it then doesn't appear to be working - their response is that it is your faith that is weak and you must cast aside doubts. It works for all dictators of any hue.

Re: They'd be better off...

I'd expect the richest hunting ground to be the lapsed Christians - perhaps the majority of the UK, people who profess Christianity but more out of tradition then real belief. They just need a good kick to realise they are not practicing their claimed religion.

Re: "... I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal"

I like that he admits that excessive information makes one less likely to go anywhere near Catholicism :D

Not sure how he thinks that "the gentle voice of reason" is the one that has less information available, but then again, this is the man in charge of an institution that has repeatedly protected serial child molesters, so being capable of doublethink is hardly surprising..

Always seek the truth

The Catholic Church very much believes in free will and seeking the truth. All the pope is trying to say here is that watching a DVD marathon of "The Wire" or reading the entire history of Sears, Roebuck, & Co. catalogs won't help someone perform open heart surgery.

There is much out there that is useful for living in our world but not for finding the meaning of life.

I'm reasonably anti-Ratzinger, but I'm not sure I'd word it *quite* like that... I mean, he's not going out there and actively spreading it. Although, he (and his administration) are responsible for not helping prevent the spread.

Still, semantics, since he actively did cover up the paedophile stuff.

That aside, I wonder what the conversion rate really is... My experience tends to be that the religious people I know are vehemently religious and won't discuss the alternative, the atheist/humanists are vehemently areligious (unreligious?), and the agnostics would rather everyone just shut up about it so that they can get on with their lives.

I'd be more inclined to listen to whatever the Pope has to say, once they listen to Jesus and return all the gold and silver stolen from South America. As a penance, they could rebuild the temples that were overthrown by zeolot priests and also return all of the religious artifacts they stole. Then, I MIGHT be inclined to listen to anything they would have to say about the teachings of Jesus.

Re: Gentle voice of reason?

thus demonstrating the danger of the meaning of a message getting confused if it is translated and rewritten- or passed down the ages.

Some OT scholars believe the original text, as far as they can tell, is "go forth and procreate responsibly".

It amuses me that the first person to research the role of fertilisation in vertebrates made little trousers for male frogs, and found the frog-spawn didn't develop into tadpoles. Not only that, but he was a Roman Catholic priest!

To Dave126

Re: To Dave126

@ribsome: I'm sure you know this, but the book of Genesis wasn't written originally in Latin... (Not that that stopped the Catholic church from treating the Vulgate as the only proper translation for centuries.) I don't have the Hebrew to comment on the original, but it's worth observing that the context is immediately after the story of the Flood, when Noah & his sons are being told to repopulate the earth. In the context of such a flood (for which there's little archaeological evidence), a few centuries of condom-free re-population might have been in order. But times change.

I know I am a bad person

Re: I know I am a bad person

I have similar mixed feelings about stopping all my donations for the preservation of Church buildings and music. In the face of the dripping vitriol in many of their public utterances - it is the least I can do to convey to them the error of their ways. They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.

Romans 16:17-18

Re: Romans 16:17-18

Re: Romans 16:17-18

@Obviously! - Here on the Internet, we have this thing called a search engine, and there are innumerable online Bibles. Whatever you think of the Bible, the meaning of those verses, and the point the OP was trying to make with them, is pretty clear.

Re: Romans 16:17-18

Not always. Sometimes the language used appears to be an idiom specific to the time, and thus meaningless to an outsider, and there are a few words which are simply lost because they survive in no other texts and their meaning has been long forgotten by speakers of the language.

The pope should be ashamed to show his face in public

The pope should be ashamed to show his face in public, the church has billions in cash, property and art, yet it still tells poor people who can't afford to feed their families not to use birth control. When he gives his wealth to the poor and shops all the pervert priests to the police I may start to listen to him. (but I will probably still think he's talking crap)

Re: The pope should be ashamed to show his face in public

As the CEO of as far as I can tell one of the oldest Global Corporations that extort money from the deluded masses for what is little more than entertainment and a social club, I suppose you have to have some supreme self confidence and brass neck to pull it off. So I doubt he's going to be bothered about showing his face in public, but yes I agree he SHOULD be too ashamed to show it.

Also don't forget the banning of condoms is also helping to spread HIV.